Advanced Open Water Disappointment

[kaylee_ann]

Also, advanced is one course that I believe SDI has better requirements for, thus leading to a better course. When I taught for PADI most of the dives in AOW, were under indirect supervision. In other words, you could go do the dive on your own and I could stay at the surface. SDI requires that an instructor be in the water for each dive. You can give constructive criticism on things you don't observe...

That’s wild as hell. That’s basically solo diving. PADI’s course for that- self reliant diver- requires divers to be advanced open water level with a minimum of 100 dives. Yet divers in advanced open water training can run a solo dive? What the heck is PADI doing?

 

[kaylee_ann]

This indirect supervision is a huge disservice to students. I remember during my IDC being told how I can sit on the beach during a navigation dive with having my students tow milk bottles at the surface.

What the actual F?

Who actually does that? How can an instructor correct students going into the weeds?

I mean, why pay for a class if your instructor isn't with you. I can ask a bystander or my 3 year old if the milk bottle went in a square pattern. I don't need to pay someone to tell me.

I need someone to correct me underwater. Am I staying at a constant depth? And I turning the correct amount? Do I need any correction?

This! When I’m working on skills, I need someone else there to give strong feedback, as well as telling me what to improve and how.

And what if I have an emergency? Do I cork so my instructor then has to kit up and then get me? Or is my fellow student supposed to rescue me.

The fact that indirect supervision is allowed by standards at any time says something truly horrible about those standards.

This is not a funny joke. We instructors have a responsibility at a bare minimum to ensure our students are always safe. It is call duty of care. Indirect supervision contradicts this responsibility. Again, this responsibility is bare minimum.

It’s ridiculous. Apparently PADI standards contradict themselves too based on another comment. Their self reliant course requires an AOW cert and 100 dives. But the AOW dives don’t require underwater supervision. That’s a solo dive. They’re not certified as either an AOW diver OR self reliant/solo diver.

 

[Twiny]

This! When I’m working on skills, I need someone else there to give strong feedback, as well as telling me what to improve and how.

It’s ridiculous. Apparently PADI standards contradict themselves too based on another comment. Their self reliant course requires an AOW cert and 100 dives. But the AOW dives don’t require underwater supervision. That’s a solo dive. They’re not certified as either an AOW diver OR self reliant/solo div

This is not a solo dive because diving students always have at least another diving student as a buddy. Anyway indirect supervision is just a neverseen possibility

 

[Forbin's Descent]

the TDI course isn't just "here's rec nitrox" but much deeper to set up a potential tech journey if my son wants to go that way. Our focus of Fundies is a rec, not tech, curriculum because it'd be first exposure to bp/w, etc. etc. No desire for doubles / drysuit / all that jazz. A pass or not is irrelevant to our journey, it's about the skills and starting gear setup. GUE would be a one-stop pass, but I'd rather focus on learning/experimentation versus passing.

If you want to get a jump start I highly recommend the Steve Martin's sidemounting.com courses. It's not just side mount stuff. He has a whole back mount section and all divers section. Goes over all the equipment set up, kicks, proper weighting etc. He has some free ones you can check out to see if you want to purchase the package which is worth the money. No certifications, just training.

 

[JoeTPhilly]

In a word: yes. That was my AOW as well. AOW is a required gateway to dive shops being willing to take you on dives. It does not prepare you for sites like the U-352. That's on my list too. My son is a WWII history buff, and we're planning an east coast u-boat dive tour as a college graduation present.

We're preparing with teh following course path:
1. OW (1986 for me, next year for him)
2. AOW (2012 vs year after next) for the card
3. TDI Nitrox for improved safety (winter break after OW)
4. GUE fundies (dials in weight and buoyancy, intro to BP/W with a known working setup, nitrox reinforcement, coaching with practice)

I figure that should meet my threshold for "competent."

You might want to look into having your son go straight into GUE Rec. 1 rather than all those courses. As they say, begin with the end in mind.

 

[tarponchik]

I am getting a lot of clarity of what the PADI AOW is supposed to be and not be from this thread. With the boats requiring it for some dives and the way the shops sell it, it is perceived to be more by us when we are complete newbs. In my case I wanted it to dive off the NC coast on sites like U-352. My local shop does the AOW in the quarry and it stands to reason that doing 4 "adventure" dives and a "deep" dive to 60' in the quarry is not going to properly prepare one to dive the wrecks and meg ledges off NC.

I did some NC wrecks (not U-352 but some other deep wrecks, like Papoose) when I had about 55 dives total, as I recall, and I did not even have a buddy. These were "every man for himself" kind of dives. Diving in a quarry can build your confidence to dive in poor visibility; however, what I think you absolutely must do before NC is any kind of boat diving and diving in at least some current.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I am getting a lot of clarity of what the PADI AOW is supposed to be and not be from this thread. With the boats requiring it for some dives and the way the shops sell it, it is perceived to be more by us when we are complete newbs. In my case I wanted it to dive off the NC coast on sites like U-352. My local shop does the AOW in the quarry and it stands to reason that doing 4 "adventure" dives and a "deep" dive to 60' in the quarry is not going to properly prepare one to dive the wrecks and meg ledges off NC.

It might prepare you to get swept away by the Gulf Stream with no idea of what to do. Certainly won't prepare you for the increased gas usage. And the thing they used to do (when I did mine) was show you how colors disappear as you go deeper. Stupidest thing and most useless on a deep dive. Unless you are diving at mid day in the Caribbean, going deeper than 60 ft (in some quarries 10ft) means you better have a light. Which negates the color loss!
When I taught the deep dive in AOW students carried a redundant gas bottle that they had been carrying and practicing with for 3 dives prior.
We would descend to 90 ft, tie off a reel, swim out using the reel, turn and come back spooling up the line. At the tie off they would untie it and hand it to me. Then I'd give the up signal to ascend.
As we started up I'd give the out of air signal and see how they reacted(ready to grab them if need be).
Best way to check for narcosis. We would share air for 10-15 feet and then go back on our own regs up to the safety stop. There they would switch to the pony and finish the ascent.
They would learn how fast gas is used up at depth, perform an actual dive related task, a rescue skill, and switch to a redundant gas supply.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

That’s wild as hell. That’s basically solo diving. PADI’s course for that- self reliant diver- requires divers to be advanced open water level with a minimum of 100 dives. Yet divers in advanced open water training can run a solo dive? What the heck is PADI doing?

They might still have a buddy, it’s just that the instructor’s not around. Which is still bazaar.

 

[Racer_X]

You might want to look into having your son go straight into GUE Rec. 1 rather than all those courses. As they say, begin with the end in mind.

The end, tbh, is options and optimization. Do not want this to be GUE bash / kool-aid thread, but a straight GUE program is limiting by definition. This training plan will:
1. assess GUE instructors and the GUE program for potential future learning
2. assess my LDS' ability to teach TDI as well as SDI coursework for future learning
3. Lock in nitrox certification w/o needing to re-cert or renew
4. Lock in ability to meet dive shop's AOW requirements
------------thus endeth the basic value, value add below---------------
5. Open opportunities for variable tech training over the next 20 years
6. Expose us to varying different gear set ups with a known good starting point
7. Offer the ability to customize gear set ups to optimize for personal effectiveness as we continue to dive
8. Reinforce multiple concepts to sink them deep (pardon the pun) to ensure a solid base.

Keeping options open is always more expensive than lock in. I've never been much of a joiner, so I'm willing to invest in options.

If you want to get a jump start I highly recommend the Steve Martin's sidemounting.com courses. It's not just side mount stuff. He has a whole back mount section and all divers section. Goes over all the equipment set up, kicks, proper weighting etc. He has some free ones you can check out to see if you want to purchase the package which is worth the money. No certifications, just training.

If you want to get a jump start I highly recommend the Steve Martin's sidemounting.com courses. It's not just side mount stuff. He has a whole back mount section and all divers section. Goes over all the equipment set up, kicks, proper weighting etc. He has some free ones you can check out to see if you want to purchase the package which is worth the money. No certifications, just training.

Thanks! More to study while I'm shorebound.

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

This thread is on the verge of going off the rails and close to the edge of ScubaBoards ToS regarding "Agency Bashing"

Fortunately some of the more experienced members / divers have corrected some points made by new members / inexperienced divers with regards to the PADI AOW course, thank you

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[Searcaigh]

PADI is, I believe, the largest agency globally involved in teaching scuba diving, and therefore statistically the number of poor instructors will be higher in number using PADI compared to another agencies with less instructors e.g. SSI. I have no statistics to back this up, only my assumption.

Let's face it when we were at school/college/university we had good teachers, bad teachers and some in-between, but what did we know at the time?

When we start diving we basically know nothing about underwater apart from what we've seen in TV and movies and depending on educational background perhaps even with no scientific background, everyone starts at a very random spot to be honest.

We occasionally see something happening at times every day and wonder why this is happening, but without a total knowledge of the back story, we can easily assume the wrong thing.

Let's remember that the OW courses are designed for 10 year olds to understand, I'm not sure that as a 10 year old I would have been ready to start scuba diving.

In one post, I believe someone quoted around USD500 for the OW course, and mentioned that he thought it was cheap. Well yes it is, my daughter charges double that when teaching OW, primarily because she has a day job and her weekends are her time. She also limits her teaching to people she assesses to be good candidates, and who will be able to do the course in whatever time she has to teach them.

You pay for what you get. I know one instructor who teaches sidemount for USD1,600, and the candidates must be AOW certified and pass an assessment dive before being accepted on his course, because he doesn't want to waste his time teaching other skills that the diver should already have.

Other instructors that I know, who are full time and doing scuba instruction every day may charge less and possibly not refuse any candidate as they have the time to work with them, even from the very basics of teaching them how to swim, and I commend them for that.

This comes down to the fact it's not the agency who teach, it's an instructor who teaches. They follow standards laid down by the agency. Some go an extra mile, others may do the basic because they're overworked and underpaid or just lazy, but as a new student, who would know what is to be done? Read the book (if you have one), the standards that are required are written down on what has to be achieved.

Most of the posts in this thread are predominantly from a US perspective too, so perhaps there is a problem with teaching diving and dive shops in the US? I know that "factory' style scuba instruction in other countries exists, Thailand immediately springs to mind, although I haven't dived there since the mid 90s, but I've seen similar practices here in the UAE with a couple of shops too Having cheap courses only reduces the quality of instruction when shops / instructors are trying to get the "masses" into scuba diving and hopefully enough people from DSDs will go on to do OW courses. But this is not an agency thing, it's a shop trying to make money and survive in a competitive market with poor business practices!

I will add that my US diving experience is limited to two dive sites with one person I met here on ScubaBoard, and had no issues with both dives (shore) and no interaction with any dive shop for these dives. My visits to US dive shops have been limited to purchasing gear only and not dive courses.

The AOW course has three choices in what the diver can do along with the two compulsory subjects, nobody should be forced to do what the shop / instructor decides if they don't like it, but then again perhaps there is limited choice in some places, which has to be taken into account.

Everyone these days appears to want stuff for as cheap as possible, and then complain that they didn't get value for money, quality doesn't come cheap.

Perhaps future AOW students should do a bit more research before signing up for AOW with a shop / instructor before committing to it.

I will add that I have no affiliation to PADI or any other dive agency and that my background in diving is a mix of various agencies including BSAC, PADI and IANTD.